The Landing
by Unitarian Jihadist
Summary: 1,430 years after kings warred, dragons returned, and Ice and Fire sang, a Stark once again comes to King's Landing to investigate a suspicious royal death.
1. Prologue

**The Landing**

 _1,430 years after kings warred, dragons returned, and Ice and Fire sang, a Stark once again comes to King's Landing to investigate a suspicious royal death._

The usual disclaimer: The world of Ice and Fire is the creation, and the intellectual and legal property of, George RR Martin. I am playing in his world because I am a big fan of his work, and I do so only for my entertainment and hopefully the entertainment of others

Prologue

As soon as Father's driver opened the back door, Alys Karstark was freezing, and desperately wished she was sitting by the fireplace at home. This winter was the longest one in four generations, lasting over half of Alys' scant 6 years of life. Except for pine trees or indoor plants or the occasional green vegetable, Alys had seen very little greenery in her life, except for paintings and colorized photographs in Mother's flower and garden magazines.

She was standing in a snowed over parking lot next to Father's Old Town Model 9. The fading light of the afternoon had turned the grey, overcast day into a charcoal twilight. The Model 9 was black right down to its tinted windows, and the clanks and pings of the rapidly cooling engine made it sound like a fitfully sleeping mechanical beast. The oil field, with its derricks and pumps, looked in the twilight shadow like a city that was abandoned before it was built, haunted by the ghosts of people who never lived.

"Watch out for wights," Alys' 12 year old brother, Lars, said. "The Others like to send them to grab little kids and turn them into baby wights. You'd be perfect for them."

"You'd be perfect for them, too!" Alys retorted. She never would have dared to argue with her older brother if Father had not been there.

"Yeah, but I'm way faster," Lars replied. "Wights are too slow for me, but plenty fast for a short legged little girl kid like you!"

Alys knew that Lars was right about that. She looked at the increasingly ominous looking oilfield and wished she had stayed home with Mother, even though just an hour before she had begged Father to let her come with him. But staying home with an indifferent mother in a warm house now sounded much better than walking into a cold, dark oilfield that could be hiding rogue wights.

Alys had never seen a wight, but she had once seen two Others at one of her parents' dinner parties. They were bundled in heavy coats to, perversely, protect them from indoor heat. As Father presented Alys to them, he warned her not to touch their exposed skin, which would freeze her fingertips black even as her fingertips branded their skin like tiny and red hot irons. Nevertheless, even through well insulated gloves, Alys felt the unnatural cold of their long fingered and elegant hands

The Others were unnaturally and ethereally beautiful in a way that made them more terrifying than the most hideous monster Alys could imagine. Months later, she still dreamed of cold but glowing blue eyes staring out of the dark woods, calling her to leave the warmth of her bed and covers to be enveloped in a final, frozen hug.

" _Quiet_ , boy," Father rumbled as he finished pulling on his gloves. He was a very large man in his long grey overcoat and fine wool hat. "Stop trying to scare your sister."

Father shoved the Model 9's door closed before the shapeless and nameless driver could do it for him. The loud sound of the slamming car door made Alys jump. She thought maybe Lars jumped a little, too.

"Yes, Father," Lars said, sounding contrite. However, the look Lars gave her from the depths of his wool hat and scarf told Alys that worse than scaremongering about wights was in her near future. She never liked, nor would she ever like, her big brother. Father was strict and could be frightening at times, but Lars was just plain mean.

Father walked through the parking lot, kicking snow out of his way with an irritated, shuffling step. The only other car in the parking lot, a space or two away from the Model 9, looked like a shapeless pile of snow. Lars and Alys followed their father while the driver remained by the Model 9. They came upon a freshly shoveled sidewalk. The sidewalk led to a small, concrete building fronted by a green metal door with one small, round, and dirty window, through which shined a dim, pale grey light. Next to the green door was a red button, which Father pushed. There was a loud buzz, followed by an angry exclamation from inside the building, and a crash. The light behind the window suddenly changed to a much brighter yellow, and the door was pulled open. The man who opened the door looked angry. His hair was long and white, and his beard was longer and whiter. He wore a long sleeved grey work shirt and blue denim pants, and he was even thicker and taller than Father.

"Who…?" the man started to ask, loudly. However, the question died on his tongue unasked as Father pulled off his hat. The man's expression instantly changed from anger to a cross between fear and embarrassment. After all, Father owned the oil field, the parking lot, the building, and therefore the man's job. Almost everyone Alys knew outside of her family were people employed by Father, or the family of people employed by Father. _Everyone_ she knew deferred to Father.

"Excuse me, milord," the man said as he opened the door wider and stood aside. He spoke much more softly, but Alys could still hear him clearly. That was a good thing, because Father hated it when the people talking to him muttered. "I wasn't expecting company."

Father stepped past the man and entered the room, Alys and Lars followed. The heat in the building was a blessed relief.

The building was small. Along the right was a wall of grey machines with lots of gauges, levers, and dials. There was a small metal desk along the opposite wall covered in papers and pencils. A single coffee cup was perched precariously on the papers. Along the back wall, there was a small wood stove with a coffee pot. The walls were cinderblock and painted the same grey as the machines along the left wall. In the back left hand corner of the room, built out from the corner, was a small room with an open door. The open door revealed a filthy sink and an even filthier toilet.

"Would milord like some coffee?" the man asked. "I really don't have anything else to offer you…"

Father waved his hand impatiently and started asking rapid fire questions about the pumps. Alys shrank as far as she could against the wall next to the front metal door, as far away as she could get from the wall of machines, the desk, and the stove. Lars stood with his arms crossed and watched Father interrogate the man, pretending to understand Father's questions and the man's answers, even though Alys knew they were as much beyond him as they were beyond her. Lars was mean, but not very smart. Alys was little and young and a girl, which Lars liked, but she was also smart, and Lars did not like that.

The man, to his credit, answered Father's questions calmly, and he remained calm even as Father's questions went from loud, angry, and rapid to slow and quietly menacing. And even though Alys did not understand what the man was saying either, she could tell that he was keeping his answers the same. The man was not arguing with Father, not exactly, but he was still standing his ground, and that was different.

"To keep the pumps running in this cold, I need equipment, and I need help," the man kept saying.

All too soon, Father broke off his questioning and simply said, "Show me."

The man nodded and took his coat off of the coat hanger next to the door.

"Come along, children," Father said as the other man jerked open the door, and a blast of cold air followed. Alys zipped up her coat and started to follow, but Lars shoved past her and went out the door first. Father and the other man walked in a rapid pace down the sidewalk, and were soon crossing the snow covered parking lot. The snow slowed them down, but not enough for Alys' short legs to catch up. Lars was running after them and grinning at her over his shoulder. Alys started to run too. Then, just as he reached the end of the parking lot, Lars stopped and at the last minute, stuck his foot out. Alys tripped over her brother's foot and landed face first into the snow, which was not only freezing cold, but not nearly as soft as it looked or felt underfoot. The snow felt like it was made of tiny pieces of flash frozen glass. Blinded by the white, the cold, the pain, and the humiliation, Alys started to panic as she tried to regain her feet. By the time she pulled her head out of the snow, Father and the other man were walking into the field. Lars was with them. Alys wanted to yell at them to wait, but she did not want to think what  
Father's reaction would be if she yelled after them, so she started to follow them as quickly as she could. Unfortunately, as she followed them, crying softly to herself, she fell further and further behind. She briefly considered going back and waiting with the driver by the car, but she almost immediately rejected that idea. Father would assume she was walking with them, and if he didn't see her, he might think she was lost. Alys did not want to think about what might happen if Father found her waiting by the car after he searched a nighttime oilfield for his missing daughter.

So Alys followed as she walked through the parking lot and into the oil field. When she saw Father, the man, and Lars turn to the left she turned with them to keep them in sight. But somewhere, she realized, they must have turned again, because she lost sight of them.

Alys stood alone in the snow, surrounded by derricks and mostly still pumps. The sun had almost completely set now, and the half moon was not yet out. The white snow was the only reason why Alys was not in complete darkness. She decided to retrace her steps and go back and wait by the car after all. But when she turned around, the snow behind her was as pristine as the snow in front of and either side of her. She turned back around, and then around again, trying to find her footsteps.

But there was no sign of them, and soon she realized she didn't even know which direction she had been going, or which direction she was facing. She was alone, and she was lost.

And then, somewhere, she heard soft laughter.

"Who…who's there?" Alys whispered.

The laughter was repeated, but a little longer, and just a little louder. Alys thought she saw a flash of white from behind a still pump. Alys decided that it was better to call out, and risk getting in trouble with Father, than it was to face whoever or whatever was laughing at her.

"Father!" Alys called. " _Father_! _**Father!**_ "

She heard a crunch of snow behind her, and she turned, and saw, by the light of the finally rising half-moon, Father. There was no sign of Lars or the man in the grey work shirt.

Father's skin was white. There was a scarlet hole where his left eye had been, and his right eye was wide and (bright!) blue and dead. He shuffled towards her, his arms extended, and his teeth clacking.

Alys, screaming, turned and ran. She stumbled through the snow but stayed upright, screaming and running until her voice ran out, but her legs kept going. Eventually the run became a walk, but she still stayed upright, and she was no longer in the oil field, and indeed she was no longer in the Kingdom of the North.

….

She was instead walking across the endless railroad tracks of King's Landing's Northtown District. And she was no longer the little girl she had been 82 years before, she was the old woman she was now.

She continued to walk, even when she looked down and saw her thin bare legs and feet blackened by severe frostbite, and her night dress in tatters. She held up her hands in front of her face. Her fingers were also black.

But there was no pain in her hands, her feet, her legs, her lungs, her face, or anywhere at all.

Alys' pounding heart gradually slowed as she continued her impossible walk. It was cold, and there was snow on the ground, although not a lot. The meteorologist she had watched on the television had said that a cold front from the North was bringing sub-freezing temperatures with it. As was her habit, she went to bed after the forecast, she had no interest in hearing the latest handball, hockey, or indoor jousting scores. As she crawled under the covers, she reflected back on the terrible winter that dominated her childhood.

That was clearly the reason for the current nightmare, and why it started with a memory of that trip to the oilfield, taken with Father and Lars, so long ago.

Of course, Father was not turned into a wight on that day. She had not gotten lost, and had followed her tracks back to the Model 9 and the driver. The driver had given her some of his hot chocolate as they waited for Father and Lars and the site supervisor to return. Alys had worried so much about what Father would say when he found her waiting in the Model 9, but he did not say anything. Years later, Alys realized he must have told her to stay in the car, but she was too busy being tripped by her brother to hear him.

Alys continued to dream of walking on dead feet across railroad tracks.

Lars Karstark died seven years later, age 19, in an automobile accident in Winterfell. The accident had also killed three other people; a mother, a father, and an infant girl, and made an orphan of a 4 year old boy. Lars had been in the wrong lane, traveling four times the speed limit, and the Coroner's Report indicated that his blood alcohol level was so high he was probably driving because he could no longer walk.

Alys continued to dream of walking on dead feet across railroad tracks.

Jilla Karstark, Alys' mother, died less than a week after Lars when she chased down an entire bottle of sleeping pills with Northern Alliance vodka. Alys suspected that it had less to do with losing her son than it did with the final realization that Lars had died with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Jeor Karstark remarried and lived for 16 more years, fathering five more children. Father's will made Alys the Chief Executive Officer of Karstark Extractions, and under her control, the company thrived. Her oldest step brother became the newest Lord Karstark, but that meant nothing. All the wealth and power were in the company, the largest privately held mining and fossil fuel company in the world. Even in the relatively liberal North, a woman becoming the CEO of a major company ( _the_ major company of the North) was highly unusual.

Alys continued to dream of walking on dead feet across railroad tracks.

Five years later, while on a business trip in King's Landing, she was invited to a Royal Ball and introduced to the Crown Prince of Westros, Robert Starkaryen. Two months later, the Prince visited her at her Winterfell office, and a month later he proposed. She refused, even though she found the man and his attentions extremely attractive. Marrying the eventual King of Westros meant giving up her company.

Alys continued to dream of walking on dead feet across railroad tracks.

Three years and four Royal proposals later, Alys finally relented and accepted. Her half-brother, Lord Robb Karstark, took over the company. Like Father, he was an engineer trained at the University of the Citadel, and even though he didn't have her business sense, he was adequate. Alys gave up her office for her handsome and sexy prince, who turned out to be a good man with a hilarious sense of humor (behind closed doors, anyway). It almost made up for the loss of a meaningful career in favor of endless ceremonies, parades, flashbulbs, shouted questions, and gossip columns lamenting the fact that the Prince took an older woman as his bride instead of a younger woman with most of her child bearing years in front of her. Almost.

Alys continued to dream of walking on dead feet across railroad tracks.

Ten months after her Royal Wedding, Alys Karstark Starkaryen gave birth to Crown Prince Eddard Starkaryen. Two years and two months after that, she gave birth to a daughter, Princess Daena Starkaryen. She gave birth to final child, Prince Robert Starkaryen, twelve years and two months later, only to watch him die in an incubator.

Alys continued to dream of walking on dead feet across railroad tracks. She realized that she could no longer blink, as if her eyes were frozen open.

Two months to the day after his infant namesake died, King Robert Starkaryen died in an accident riding his great, multi-colored dragon, Edgron. The dragon had apparently tried to refuse when she (she was a she at the time) smelled alcohol on his breath. He wasn't falling down drunk like Lars had been, but drinking and riding a dragon, even an intelligent, psychic beast who loves you, is suicidal. And for a dragon, Edgron had a soft heart. How the tabloids had had fun with that.

Eddard, at the tender young age of 15, became king, and Alys became a widow and the Queen Mother. Eddard was now 52, with three surviving adult children of his own, plus a fourth, another Robert Starkaryen of all things, killed with his dragon somewhere over Norvos during the Fourth Great War.

How long ago was that now? Three years? Four?

Alys dreamed she stopped walking on dead feet across railroad tracks. She simply stood. No snow was falling out of the sky but it was drifting over the rows and rows of railroad tracks and visibility was still limited.

The dream was so real. As Queen Consort and Queen Mother, Alys had made many tours of the railyards that connected the docks of King's Landing to the rest of the United Kingdoms of Westros. The details that she could see were perfect. The earlier dream of the winter oilfield of her youth was, she realized, far more impressionistic. But now, every direction she looked, she could see the light posts and the signs that labeled where a set of tracks were going. She could see the signage on the nearest warehouses.

And, in the distance, she could see the bundled form of a man. He was yelling. Probably wondering what an old woman in night clothes was doing in the railyards in the middle of a winter's night.

It was time to wake up.

But she still could not close her eyes, and now she realized why she could not hear what the man was yelling. There was noise, a noise so all-encompassing that she didn't realize it was there. It was deafening, like 1,000 train engines and horns all arriving at the same time. That was probably right. A thousand trains were bearing down on her because, after all, this was still a nightmare. She tried to turn her head to see them coming, but her head resisted turning. She tried to will herself awake, and thought that the best way to do so was to turn the head that resisted turning so that she could see the AWFUL THING that was coming to finally scare her awake. But when she finally turned her head, she turned into a blinding light that hid the thing that was coming, and the last thing she realized was that she was now deaf as well as blind.

….

Jak Steel, security guard for Old Landing Railroad, watched the 4:10 from Riverrun, brakes squealing, obliterate a nameless old woman in her nightclothes. It happened so fast, she was there and then she was gone, that for a minute afterwards he was sure he had imagined it, even though his last ale had been three days ago.

It must have been a trick of the snow.

But then the 4:10 from Riverrun came to a slow, screeching stop, and the engineer ran out yelling "What the fuck? What the fuck?" over and over again, and Jak Steel realized he had imagined nothing.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 _The snow was deep and the forest was dark, but I (she) had no real difficulty seeing, although my (her) hearing and sense of smell overcame any problems caused by the darkness. Dawn was just starting to turn the sky from black to a slate grey, and soon it would be blue. I loved the way I (she) saw the world in black, grey, brown, and blue._

 _Running alongside me was my (her) Father, from whom I (she) inherited my (her) bluish black fur. He growled softly and touched my mind with what he smelled, and after he did so I (she) smelled it too: A stag, old and worn, strong but once stronger, and soon, very soon, to be much weaker. The smell, and now the breathing that was carried by the wind, told the story. The stag has lost his harem to a younger male, once weaker, now stronger. His usefulness was at an end. He would still eat some, but not enough, and he would try to challenge other, stronger males in a futile effort to win the rights to challenge for another harem. He had fathered many children, some of whom would carry on his line, but his contribution was done. It was winter, and he would not outlive it._

 _But he still ran, not quite believing the pack that had left him and his alone was now chasing him. I (she) smelled and heard them as well, the wind catching their running tread. My (her) Father's second mate, in human terms my (her) step mother, but in dire wolf thought she was simply what my (her) Mother once was, the Mother of the pack, was leading them. Also chasing the stag were four of my (her) younger siblings. They were chasing the stag to my (her) Father and me (her). We waited to end the stag's run, to end him before starvation ended him, and while he still made a good meal for the pack._

 _I thought now was probably the best time to check in._

" _What time is it?" I asked._

 _In the distance, into my head, my voice replied, "Three quarters into the sixth hour. Train is still running two hours late, so that gives you 20 hundredths of an hour to switch back, but I am not done yet."_

" _Done with what?" I replied. "You're sitting on a train."_

" _Found a book in the reading car."_

" _I hesitate to even ask."_

" _No problem. It's_ _The Dashing Dragonrider 2_ _."_

 _My (her) response to that was to growl. My (her) Father turned and glared at me, so I put my (her) head down and tried to look sorry._

" _Did you just_ _ **growl**_ _?" my voice from a distance asked. "Father will never let you participate in a hunt again if the stag hears you and turns. And then I will never get to read a decent romance novel again."_

" _There is no such thing as a decent romance novel," I replied. "Popular literature criticism aside, I guess I better concentrate on what I am doing here."_

" _Please do," my distant voice replied. "I would never live it down if you blow this hunt. We've been watching that stag for years. He is a tough old thing. You have a real opportunity here."_

 _And, indeed, the stag was getting closer. He hadn't changed his course, so I guess he didn't hear my (her) growl. The sky was continuing to get lighter, and blue showed through the leafless grey branches. The color blue seemed brighter and more beautiful when seen through eyes that could not see red and green. The Father, who unlike his daughter or his own father had no name in the Common Tongue, lowered his great head. I (she) did the same. I (she) could now hear the rapid heartbeat of the running stag._

 _The Father's thoughts reached into my (her) head:_

 _Reach out, those thoughts told me in words that were not words, reach out to the stag. I (she) did so, listening to the heartbeat, smelling the fearful desperation. I concentrated, and now I was in his head as well as my (her) own (and, truth to tell, partially in another head riding on a distant southbound train). The view was panoramic, bright blue splotches of sky over the greys, browns, and blacks of the forest._

 _I put bad romance novels and southbound trains out of my mind and used the power in my (her) mind to master the stag's fear. His running, heartbeat, and breathing all slowed._

 _Stop, I (she) commanded. Relax. You have lived your life, but you still have one more thing to give._

 _He stopped. I barely recognized my (her) great black form and the Father's greater black form standing in front of us. The stag could no longer react to the two large dire wolves standing in his escape path. I (she) now had control._

" _Need help with the next part?" the distant voice in my head asked._

" _No," I replied. "I've got this."_

 _No pain, I (she) commanded. And he felt none, even as he was hit from in front by the father, and from behind by his mate. He felt no pain as teeth crushed his larynx and tore at his haunch._

 _The hunt was over. My (her) mouth watered as the Father joined the Mother in tearing open the stomach of the stag. I (she) waited patiently until the Mother, then the Father, looked up and invited me (her) to start to eat. I (she) took a kidney, wolfed it down (heh!), then started to tear at the leg._

 _I (she) was still tearing at it when my voice in my head from a distant southbound train said: "We are about 5 hundredths out from Grand Northern Station. We need to switch back."_

" _OK," I said, and then I was in a long sideways tunnel, feeling a presence pass me the other way._

I was looking down at an open paperback book. The left hand page was labeled "Chapter 14 The Knight Returns to The Twins."

" _Don't throw it away_ ," my voice in my head said, this time coming from a northern forest. I heard tearing sounds in the distance indicating that the rest of the pack was now eating their fill. " _By the way, how were you pulling on the leg? Everyone here is laughing about it, even Father._ "

" _It's not like I'm an experienced dire wolf_ ," I replied. " _I think I did OK."_

I closed the paperback after folding down the page. On a colorful blue cover, a big, bronze man with silver hair was passionately kissing a dark haired woman with half covered breasts three times the size of mine. His hand was touching one of them. The other hand was under her skirt, pulling it up so that a lot of leg and a bare foot were visible. Her left hand was in his long silver hair. The other hand was loosely holding a riding crop. Why someone would be holding a riding crop for riding a giant, flying, telepathic reptile I had no idea.

" _I'm sure you did your best_ ," my warg sister, the great dire wolf Nightmask, said. " _After all, driving a human is much easier than driving a sophisticated living engine like me. Thanks for loosening it for me._ "

I heard a tearing sound, and could imagine that Nightmask was easily tearing off the leg I had been yanking on next to forever.

" _I'm throwing away the book now_ ," I said as I reached down and put it in my open purse.

" _Don't you dare_ ," Nightmask said. " _Don't you even_ _ **dare**_ _!"_

" _Eat your dinner_ ," I said. " _The one I helped catch for you._ "

" _Leave me the book_ ," Nightmask said. " _The one I'm reading for you._ "

By mutual agreement, we broke contact and I started to gather my stuff. I closed my purse and reached under my seat for my carryon. From across the aisle, I heard a child's voice.

"Who were you talking to?"

It was a little girl, maybe 8, looking at me. Her accent said she was likely from White Harbor. She was almost invisible under her knitted red hat and wool, grey coat. Her father, dressed in a long black overcoat and fiddling with his scarf, looked mildly embarrassed by his daughter's forthright question. Or maybe he was more worried about his daughter talking with the crazy woman who was talking to herself. The girl's mother was putting her latest knitting project into her purse.

"I'm a warg," I said, truthfully.

The girl's eyes went wide.

"Faaar out!" she said. "So were you talking to your _dire wolf_?"

The girl's mother's face turned as white as her white coat. With her white blond hair and blue eyes, she looked a little like a wight. She probably wouldn't have been more horrified if I had revealed myself to be an Other. Most people from the Kingdoms south of the North categorized wargs with such exotic supernatural terrors as witches, Red Priests, dragons, dire wolves, giants, and Others. Not Forest Children, though. Everyone liked Forest Children. Well, except for those of us who actually knew a Child of the Forest. They are actually scary little buggers.

Then again, the mother probably just thought that a respectable woman would never admit to being a warg if she was one, and conversely would never try to cover for her psychosis by claiming to be one if she wasn't one. Either way, such a woman could never be a safe conversational partner for her daughter.

"Yep," I replied, as if I was ignoring mother's disapproval (I noticed, but being an uncouth Northern yokel, I simply didn't care). "Except that she isn't 'my' dire wolf any more than I am 'her' human. She's like my sister."

Actually, more like my other half.

Through the windows on the girl and her family's side of the train, I could see the railroad tracks, trains, and warehouses that made up Northtown. The father was whispering to his daughter.

"Don't you know it's rude to ask questions?"

"Especially to strangers," added the mother.

The girl shrugged at me and smiled. I smiled back. I liked her. My Dad never told me not to ask questions. Quite the opposite, asking questions was part of the family business.

I opened the shade on my window. When Nightmask and I exchanged bodies, there was an older woman sitting next to me who shut the shade as soon as she sat down (She did ask me first, she was a nice lady, I liked her too. I'm pretty easy going. Really, I am.). She wasn't there now, so I could reach across the now empty seat to open the window. Either she got off at the last stop, or she moved to another spot to get away from the crazy woman talking to herself, except it really wasn't me talking to myself. It was Nightmask talking to me telepathically, except humans aren't as easy to drive as she thinks. For example, I can conduct a telepathic conversation without talking out loud.

I looked out the window. In the distance, I saw a square of hot pink crime tape. There were four Royal Marines, one at each corner, standing guard. In the cold, they had to be miserable. They had my sympathy.

I now knew the spot where the Queen Mother of Westros, Alys Karstark Starkaryen, had gotten herself pulped by the 4:10 from Riverrun.

I bent down to pick up my carryon from under my seat. The girl's question had interrupted my last attempt. As I did so, my coat fell open, and I heard the mother from across the aisle gasp. In fact, this time I hear several gasps in the compartment. Obviously, people were seeing the gun on my hip.

I sat back up. Maybe I would get the carryon on my third try.

"It's OK, folks," I said with my best, laid back, reassuring Northern drawl. I opened up my coat further to show them my shield. "I'm a Deputy Warden of the North. I got a license for this."

Most of the people in the compartment, including the girl's mother and father, went about gathering their stuff and pretending that I wasn't talking to them. The girl, though, stared at me like I was the coolest thing she had ever seen (and I probably was, as far as she was concerned, women wearing shields and guns were not a common sight outside of the Kingdoms of the North and Dorne).

"You're here about the Queen Mother, aren't you?" the girl asked in a loud whisper, pretending that she didn't want her parents to hear her next impertinent question but really not at all caring that they did. I really liked this kid.

"She can't answer that, Lyanna," the father said.

"Your dad's right, Lyanna," I said. "I can't answer that."

Then I winked, because the worst kept secret in Westros was that the Warden of the North (or as I called him, Dad) was going to send someone to look into the death of the best known member of the wealthiest family of the North. Because said death was, if not suspicious, downright weird.

I looked out the window, but all I saw was a bunch of other passenger trains, some moving, some sitting still. The train was moving slow enough that a bundled up man could walk next to the train, waving a stick even though the engineer driving the train was well in front of him, probably looking at another guy walking and waving a stick.

I decided to initiate my third try to reach under my seat and pick up my carry on. Success!

I had made it to King's Landing. It was time to get to work.


End file.
